Analyzing Request/Response Network Traffic

.NET Explorer enables developers and testers to explore the TCP/HTTP network traffic that is sent and received with each Web service and .NET Remoting call. Such information can be helpful to developers in seeing how large objects are serialized in XML when they are sent. It is also helpful to testers in load-testing scenarios.

With Web service calls, which are generally XML over HTTP, the actual content of HTTP headers from the requests and responses is displayed.

  1. Right-click an invoked Web service call or .NET Remoting method in the Input Data, Output Data, or Test Scenario pane and select Show Traffic. The Request/Response data of method call dialog box opens. Alternative: Select a method call and click Net Traffic on the Workflow bar. The upper left pane of the dialog box shows you the request header information of the call. The upper-right pane shows the reponse header information of the call. The lower-left window shows the request body, which is a SOAP envelope in the case of Web service calls. The lower-right pane displays the response body, which is also a SOAP envelope in the case of Web service calls.
  2. Select view tabs to view data in the request body and response body panes:

    • Hex View - Displays traffic data in binary (hexadecimal) view. This is useful when exploring the .NET Remoting binary protocol.

    • XML View - Displays SOAP traffic in an XML tree view. This view makes it easier to analyze the XML content of SOAP messages.
    • Text - Displays traffic data in a textual representation without formatting.
  3. Click OK.
Parent topic: Analyzing Results